Daily Archives: December 8, 2014

A dark chapter in German history: In the Night of Broken Glass (otherwise known as “Reichspogromnacht” or “Kristallnacht” in German) in the night from November 9 to November 10, 1938, synagogues all over Germany were set ablaze. Photo: welt.de

The Declaration of Barmen was ‘a call to resistance against the theological claims of the Nazi state.’ As history repeats and God is once again diminished in society, should Americans know this erased history?

Note:

December 8 2014 marks the 12th anniversary of of the inauguration of the Bergische synagogue, which was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938. The Bergische synagogue was rebuilt, finally, in 2002 only to be firebombed again during the summer of 2014 by Palestinian teenagers. In August, when I sat down to write about about this synagogue being firebombed, I dug into the history of the synagogue itself. As an author, I could not believe what I discovered, mostly from Google-translated German sources.

The land upon which the synagogue rests was sacred, as it was where the Declaration of Barmen took place by religious leaders of various denominations, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, who were horrified to observe that the “German Christian” movement put the state before God. The Declaration of Barmen was reaffirming that Nazi principles should not be incorporated into church teachings. From the Declaration sprung the “Confessing Church,” where Pastors stood firm against Hitler’s “Positive Christianity.” Many of the church leaders were arrested and killed, but they left behind a powerful piece of erased history known as the Declaration of Barmen.

As history repeats itself many “spiritual leaders” have learned how to manipulate church teachings for political reasons. President Obama’s “spiritual adviser” Jim Wallis, for example, declared the Tea Party to be “unbiblical” last year, further asserting that they are “political extremists” who are “against poor people.”

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) are better known as “Nazi’s.” Their revealing 25 point platform explained “Positive Christianity” this way (point 24):

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.

The Bergische synagogue was rebuilt in the town of Wuppertal after being burnt to the ground in 1938 during the “night of broken glass,” or Kristallnacht, a “government-sponsored terror attack.”

The land for the synagogue was donated by the Evangelical Church not far from the original site. The plot of land was particularly significant, as it was the site of the Declaration of Barmen in 1934, which was “a call to resistance against the theological claims of the Nazi state.”

The Bergische synagogue was inaugurated on December 8, 2002. The inauguration ceremony was attended by Israel’s former president Moshe Katsav and former President Johannes Rau. Security was so tight, particularly in the wake of September 11, that “manhole covers were welded shut” for the procession.

A heavily guarded procession in 2002 for the inauguration of the Bergische synagogue.

Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Manfred Kock, spoke during the ceremony. His speech can be found here, in it’s entirety. He said in part (translated from German),

“Mutual gestures are the ones that bring reconciliation to express a backlash against all anti-Semitic impulses and excesses that undermine our country again. The disease in Europe, especially in Germany, is the anti-Semitism.”

As mentioned above, the plot of land for the synagogue was carefully chosen as the site of the Declaration of Barmen in 1934, a response to the Nazi’s “Positive Christianity,” where the “Confessing Church” emerged as a response to the attempted Nazi hijacking of Christianity (they even re-wrote the lyrics to the song “Silent Night.”)

Hitler sought to destroy Christianity. The “Deutsche Christen,” or “German Christian” movement “was organized in strict accordance with the ‘Führer principle'” and sought “to bring the church into doctrinal and institutional alignment with Nazi ideology…”

Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy leader in the Nazi Party, who wrote the words to Mein Kampf as Hitler dictated from prison, explained the Führer principle:

“Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. Whatever he does is necessary. Whatever he does is successful. Clearly the Führer has divine blessing.”

The German Christians held a national convention in 1933 in Berlin:

German Christians convention in 1933

German Christians “showed a complete loyalty to the Nazi state in their community policies and propaganda.”

The Theological Declaration of Barmen reaffirmed that God, not the state, was the only God. Many of the Pastors of the resulting “Confessing Church” were arrested and killed.

The Declaration of Barmen was “an appeal” to Christians of all denominations, in a meeting held by church leaders that stood in “opposition to attempts to establish the unity of the German Evangelical Church by means of false doctrine, by the use of force and insincere practices…” The declaration continued to affirm that “the Confessional Synod insists that the unity of the Evangelical Churches in Germany can come only from the Word of God in faith through the Holy Spirit.”

In a chilling plea, the declaration said,

“Be not deceived by loose talk, as if we meant to oppose the unity of the German nation! Do not listen to the seducers who pervert our intentions, as if we wanted to break up the unity of the German Evangelical Church or to forsake the Confessions of the Fathers!”

The Declaration of Barmen was affirming Christianity, and a denouncement of blind loyalty to the Führer. The sacred ground on which this declaration was made is now the home of the Bergische Synagogue. The gift from the Evangelical leaders to the Jewish population in Wuppertal is symbolic in their affirmation of faith.

Bergische Synagogue with the Christian church in the background via Wikimedia Commons

The Bergische Synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht, and was rebuilt. Last week, the Bergische Synagogue was firebombed. A neighbour called police after seeing flames. An 18-year-old Palestinian youth was arrested. The Synagogue, thankfully, did not catch fire.

I would call a rash of 36 deaths – grizzly murders, accidents and questionable suicides – in one year… suspicious. And that’s just this year. If you look back, this has been going on since at least 2011. So far, 36 bankers have died this year. The latest is 52-year-old Belgian Geert Tack – a private banker for ING. He has been missing for a month and they just found his body with no signs of violence visible. He managed portfolios for wealthy individuals, was successful, upbeat and had everything to live for. As most of the victims did, by the way. His body was found floating off the coast of Ostend.

In a string of deaths that makes coincidence highly improbable, the media is eerily silent on the subject. Many of these individuals were in the prime of their life and at the height of their careers. As The Economic Collapse blog has pointed out, a number of these people were involved in foreign exchange trading and derivatives.

I’ll be honest, it looks to me like someone is taking these individuals out and making them look like suicides and accidents. Or possibly random murders. There are just too many of them in high positions. I’ll leave it to you to decide. Perhaps some journalist out there should thoroughly do some research on this. Some of them look plausible, but way too many of them are very suspicious.

William Broeksmit, 58, former senior manager for Deutsche Bank — He was found hung at a house.

Ryan Henry Crane, age 37, JP Morgan — Unknown circumstances.

Li Junjie, 33, Hong Kong JP Morgan — He jumped to his death from a 30 story building.

Gabriel Magee, 39, age JP Morgan employee — He jumped 500 ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London. Magee had made plans earlier that day for dinner.

Mike Dueker, 50, who had worked for Russell Investments — He fell down a 50 foot embankment in what police are describing as a suicide.

Richard Talley, 57, was the founder and CEO of American Title (real estate titles) — Said to have committed suicide by shooting himself with a nail gun. Talley was found “with eight nail gun wounds to his torso and head” in his own garage.

James Stuart Jr. 70, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO was found dead in Scottsdale, AZ — Unknown cause of death.

Jason Alan Salais, 34 year old IT Specialist at JP Morgan since 2008 — Died from a heart attack.

Autumn Radtke, 28, CEO of First Meta, a Singapore-based virtual currency trading platform — Jumped from a 25 story building.

In a lengthy interview on Friday afternoon, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) exposed how House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise strengthened President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty with procedural trickery former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber would envy—and they did it all in the name of pushing a bill that they told Republicans would block Obama’s executive amnesty.

What’s more is that a series of interviews and recent developments indicate that Boehner’s gambit here is placing several of his top lieutenants—including at least two committee chairmen—at political risk of serious primary challenges just a few months after newly elected Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) beat now former House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a Republican primary.

This is a must read if you want to know just how badly we are being betrayed by the RINOs who are saying one thing and doing another… It’s despicable. Gohmert says in the article that the members were tricked into voting for the bill – a secret amendment was added to the bill without the members’ knowledge. Melt the phone lines folks – we are being Grubered as I have pointed out over and over again. I warned everyone that the Republicans would wait till the last minute, strike a deal and claim victory. They want Amnesty as much as the Dems and are in it with Obama. They’ll claim they had to do it. I hate to say I told you so to everyone, but look at what is happening right before your eyes.

House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise should be convicted of treason.

Not only did they use a trick to get Republicans to support Executive Amnesty, they have decided to make Executive Amnesty the law by using subterfuge to change that bill, without notifying members they had done so. Thus creating a bill that gives the president legal right to pass out green cards to anyone he wants to declare downtrodden.

This responsibility was given by the Constitution to Congress. Boehner has abdicated this congressional right and responsibility and placed it on a golden tray at Obama’s feet. How is anyone, even any of the states, going to be able to sue when it is part of the law enacted by both houses of Congress and signed by the president? If you’re imagining Chief traitor Roberts is going to stop this, you are living in La La Land.

What Obama had absolutely no right to do before, Boehner has given him every right to do. It will sail through the Senate, Obama will sign it, and the only way to get rid of it will be to get another bill signed into law removing it. Good luck with that being done over the next two years.

Boehner in the House just used subterfuge to re-create a bill giving Obama the right to use executive amnesty for “humanitarian” reasons and passed it in the House by deceiving the other congressmen who thought it was still the original good bill. The only thing Obama needs to sign now is this bill after it’s passed by the Senate and voila, congressionally authorized executive amnesty.

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: What Is The Chief Problem With Race Relations In America ? What Would It Take To Improve Them?

The Right Planet: To try to boil down “race relations” to one chief problem is a tough question. But I certainly have my opinions on the matter. There are plenty of people in this country of various and mixed races who get along just fine. We never seem to hear much about that. You know, things like racial harmony and goodwill toward men, and the like. I get along just fine with my neighbors “of color,” and vice versa.

The question reminds me of a symposium on race I attended years ago in college. I remember one of the speakers was a young white female student who said she believed that the focus shouldn’t be on race, but the fact that we’re all Americans. I agreed with her. But there was a follow-up with questions and comments from the audience. Two black female students responded to the white student’s comments by saying they agreed with her, too. But, for them, the problem was there wasn’t a day when they weren’t reminded of their “blackness.” I thought that was a compelling point. I specifically recall reading in the local morning paper on the day of the symposium several headlines mentioning “blacks”–specifically, in reference to crime and education. I thought to myself, if everyday I was reminded of my “whiteness” in reference to negative headlines, how would I feel? But now I am reading headlines reminding me of my “whiteness” in a negative sense. And I don’t like it.

The “chief problem” with race relations, in my opinion, lies with the government, main-stream media and public education, et al. The agitators (a.k.a. “change agents”) who use race as a means to an end that are at the heart of the problem. It has become advantageous for some to constantly stoke the fires of racial discord and open up old wounds that had begun to heal. One must always ask, to whose benefit? It seems to me what consistently arises from all this racial chaos–often times self-manufactured racial chaos–are calls for ever more “comprehensive legislation” and government control. For someone who has literally done nothing but study the strategy and tactics of Marxists for the past seven years, it all smacks of Marxist-Leninist strategy to me–take an honest grievance and wrap it in a lie … “rub raw the resentments of the people,” as Saul Alinsky taught … create the problem, foment the reaction, and provide the solution.

I’ll be the last person to deny that bigotry exists. But no one group has a monopoly on hate. Well, I take that back … the Marxist-Leninists, perhaps. Just saying.

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason: The problem with race relations in America today is twofold. Our public education system, beginning with our elementary schools and continuing through our colleges and universities, presents a myopic narrative of America’s early history with slavery and teaches that blacks today are still being held back by the privileged white class. They seek to destroy the myth of the American Dream and present it as something wholly unattainable, especially if you are not white.

Yes, we should teach about the existence of slavery in the Colonies and in America along with the rest of American history. The years of slavery were a horrific time for many people, not only African Americans. The truth is slavery has existed since the beginning of humankind on many continents and among all races and still exists today.

The second problem with race relations builds on the issue of education and the psychological indoctrination of our youth. It is the progressives and leftists in academia who choose the curriculum and continue to scratch at the scabs of a wound they will not permit to heal. They and their disciples insert themselves into minority communities, incite resentfulness and divisiveness, and perpetuate the narrative of victimhood for African Americans. They have created a generation of children who have no hope for their future.

To improve race relations in America, we must take back our education from the radical left, teach the values of independence, liberty and freedom that helped frame our nation, and expose these progressives and their intent to destroy our country.

Above all, every child in America must once again believe there is hope for their future.

The Glittering Eye: It’s complicated. That racism continues to play a part in American life and adversely affects the lives of black Americans is, I think, indisputable. However, not all African Americans are affected equally.

The sociologist Charles Moskas distinguishes between “African Americans” (Americans of African descent) and “Afro-Americans” (Americans of sub-Saharan African descent, the descendants of slaves) and I think that’s a valuable distinction. I think it’s pretty obvious that the children of African immigrants, e.g. Barack Obama, or Caribbeans, e.g. Colin Powell, have not experienced racism in quite the same way as Afro-Americans have or, at least, have benefited more by the various remediations we’ve put into place over the last half century. The recent Somali immigrants seem to be doing pretty well. Clearly, there’s more involved in our racial problems than just skin color.

Part of the problem is unquestionably the collapse of the Afro-American family, noted nearly a half century ago by Pat Moynihan but which has only continued since then. I attribute a considerable amount of the gang violence experienced by urban Afro-Americans as due to the lack of normal familial support systems for young black men in inner city Afro-American communities.

As to what should be done I honestly have no idea.

JoshuaPundit: Well, in order to answer this question, we have to define what the problem is. Frankly, I’m rather tired of seeing it defined simply as ‘problems blacks experience at the hands of whites.’

However, since the dominant meme in the media, in certain politicians and their supporters and the tacit acceptance and empowerment by these people of what amounts to a ‘race’ industry concerns relations between blacks and whites, let’s examine that first.

I think it’s important to recognize, first of all, that there are powerful forces that don’t want better racial relations between blacks and whites. For the Al Sharptons, the NAACP, the Jesse Jacksons, the Ta-Hanisi Coates’s and other members of what I can only call the race industry, it’s power and it’s a paycheck. And for the Democrat party, better race relations would mean a total erosion of the urban fortresses they depend on for power. These were the sort of people in Georgia, Mississippi and elsewhere in the last election who took pictures of lynchings that happened over a century ago and put fliers out telling blacks that if they didn’t turn out and vote Democrat, this was going to happen all over again. Considering the party affiliation of the men whom actually did the lynching, the irony is monstrous, but it is what it is. And it isn’t going to change unless enough blacks themselves wake up to how they’re being suckered.

There’s an old movie from 1978 called ‘Blue Collar‘ about three close friends on a Detroit assembly line,(Harvey Keitel, Yaphet Kotto and Richard Pryor) who inadvertently stumble on information concerning their union’s ties with organized crime and an illegal loan operation. In subsequent events, Kotto’s character is murdered and Keitel and Pryor are manipulated by the union to become bitter enemies. A money quote from the movie I’ve always remembered, uttered by an older white assembly worker; “They take the whites and the blacks and turn them against each other to make slaves out of both of them.”

Another problem has nothing to do with race,but with culture. And again, this is not something that can be changed from the outside.

Blacks whom were raised or had parents whom came from African cultures and especially from Caribbean cultures tend to do far better in America than many American-born blacks. The percentage of two parent families is much higher, and many times the work ethic and the attitude towards education is very different. For instance, black school children in many of these countries are taught to respect their teachers, stand when the teacher enters the room and address them as ‘sir’ or ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’____. Unless they come to America quite young and are affected by the dysfunctional parts of black American culture, you won’t usually find people from these cultures being affected by taunts that studying and working hard at education is ‘acting white.’

School children in those cultures causing the kind of disturbance routine in America’s public school urban classrooms would certainly be punished, perhaps even caned if they’re males…and in many cases, their parents would be even tougher on them. Black children in countries like Barbados and Belize take American SATs, many end up studying in America and are found in many technical and medical fields. There’s a respect for education there that simply doesn’t exist in too much of black America.

And that lack of respect for education isn’t limited to school children. I remember being involved in a project at an inner city school with several teachers and clients in a neighborhood I did business in. It was to set up a computer lab at the school through donations and fundraising. Three weeks after it was up and running, it was burglarized and cleaned out by the local gangstas. Seeing that was like attending a funeral.

When children are trained by the media to admire thugs and thug-like behavior and there is often no positive make role model in the home, the results speak for themselves. Again, there’s a significant amount of entrenched money and patronage invested in keeping things just like they are. It’s exactly like that fictional auto worker in “Blue Collar” said.

Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

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